


Flying False Colours

by MayhemCirheryn



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies), Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-17
Updated: 2015-07-08
Packaged: 2018-04-04 22:08:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4154781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MayhemCirheryn/pseuds/MayhemCirheryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Every man has a price he will willingly accept. Even for what he hopes never to sell."</p><p>James has escaped his dishonorable life as a pirate and he is glad of it, however much his dreams tell him otherwise. Dreams can be ignored with enough rum. But as Beckett maneuvers to rule the seas, a familiar face disturbs the calm before the storm.</p><p>Something in the sea has shifted and not for the better. No matter where she runs on land or sea, Grace feels her past at her heels. One way or another, old bargains and old friends are catching up. </p><p>Sequel to "The Smuggler and the Scoundrel"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: Yo Ho, All Hands

__Where it's wave over wave, sea over bow  
I'm as happy a man as the sea will allow.  
There's no other life for a sailor like me  
Than to sail the salt sea, boys, to sail the sea.  
There's no other life but to sail the salt sea. **  
**

* * *

 

There would be a storm that night. The air was heavy with it; the pennants hung listless from the masts and the usual bustle and rumble of town business was swallowed up in a hot and deadened hush. Another night, another storm.

In all her years at sea Grace could not remember such a run of foul weather as this. She watched from the window of her room as the harbor grew grey, churning and frothing against the moorings.

_Angry water. But no wind._

No wind. All these tempests and yet there was no wind to stir them. Even lubbers like Isaac, just arrived unexpected from Boston that morning, couldn't fail to notice but it was not the impossible storms that had driven her to ground. There were strange tales on the seas these days, strange enough that she could no longer pretend they didn't tug at things she wished she didn't know.

The _Black Pearl_ was lost, ran the whispers, lost and her captain taken to the Locker.

_A fitting end._

It was no surprise to anyone that Jack Sparrow had at last met his fantastic demise, and in a fashion so prone to wild rumor. Some said he had dove into the maw of the Kraken to retrieve his hat, others that he had clung to the mast of his beloved _Pearl_ and wept like a newborn babe. Others still claimed a she-devil from the deep had chained him to his ship like Andromeda to be devoured without a fight. All agreed it was Davy Jones who had taken him at last. But there were other tales, and it was those other tales that had driven the men of the _Glory_ to beg her for harbor and for her to gladly comply.

Grace had not returned to Tortuga since that night—she felt a sudden tightness in her lungs and held her breath on the memories—but even on the sea she could read the signs. Not long after leaving Tortuga she had begun to see it: ships beached and abandoned on water islands, flotsam and jetsom bobbing more thickly in the waves with tell-tale sharks teeming below. It was a matter of course for the _Glory_ to cross waves with a pirate or three, but as the months wore on Grace saw fewer and fewer black flags on the masts and more and more of the spidery triangle that was the East India Trading Company.

“Will it storm badly tonight?”

Grace turned from the window and mustered a weak smile for her cousin. “Yes,” she said. “But the _Glory_ is a strong girl and Richard a capable man. He'll see her through the night.”

Isaac joined her at the window, his own eyes fixed on the harbor. Grace had seen very little of him since his surprise arrival that morning and that was as unnatural as the waves. The man standing beside her, eyes red-rimmed and his lips pressed thin, was a husk of the one she had seen just seven months ago. He was going grey at the temples, she noticed.

_He's far too young for that._

“Isaac, what are you doing here?” she asked. “I didn't think you the sort of man to run from fatherhood.”

Isaac turned from the window. “No, no,” he said, seating himself at the edge of her dressing chair and leaning over with his hands on his knees. “My God, Grace, I didn't want to leave her, not with the child so close.”

Grace knelt in front of him, forgetting her disguise's decorum and wrenching her heavy skirts free of her legs. She took his hands and he gripped them back tight, a drowning man's grip.

“Why are you here, Isaac?” she asked again.

“I had no choice. I—” he began, but his voice choked and he coughed to get the words out. “Do you recall when last you were in port? I asked you an unusual question...”

“You asked me about Davy Jones,” Grace said, unable to keep the hush from her voice or the chill from her blood. That was an ill name at any time, but an ill name she'd heard resounding in terrified whispers from here to the coast of Barbary over the past months. In the harbor below, the breaking of the strange waves grew louder.

Isaac's eyes were wide, sunken in dark half-moons. Had he slept at all? “Dear cousin,” he said and kissed her hands, still clutched tight in his. He whispered something against her fingers.

_No! Damn you, damn you, damn you!_

She tore her hands away and jolted to her feet, stumbling a bit over her hem and heeled shoes. “Do not use that name again, Isaac. I can't hear it like this,” she said. She took a slow breath; for the first time in years, she felt faint. Even in a whisper, the name was like knives and dust.

_ My _ _name._

 Out on the harbor, the ship bells were ringing.

“Grace, please!” Isaac said from behind her. “Either I'm going mad or...”

Grace spun back to face him, her heart suddenly in her throat. “What did you see?”

“A ship,” Isaac said, his voice hoarse. “Huge, with...with _teeth_. It appeared...it _seemed_ to appear from beneath the waves. But that's impossible. It's impossible, isn't it? It must be.”

Grace closed her eyes, the roar of the waves below filling the blackness and Isaac's stunned ramblings drifted away into the sound of them. She could picture it clearly still. One hand on the wheel, still bloody. Scratching tears and sweat from her face with the other as she turned for one last look...and the spray and the masts that appeared just there between blue and blue. She'd told herself after it had been a trick of her tears in the fading light, but she had always known that she'd lied.

“You're not mad, Isaac,” she said, and her voice sounded hollow, echoing in her own ears. “Though in the end you may find you would have preferred it.”

Grace opened her eyes to look at her cousin, but instead of turning to Isaac she found herself drawn to the window. The flags still hung dead, but the waves were so loud! Louder than she'd ever heard. They crashed like a gale, and yet there was no gale. She was dimly aware of Isaac's hands gripping her arms, dimly aware that she was leaning out the window, pulled by some tide in her blood. And over the phantom crash of the waves with no wind, she heard it. Thin and wailing from over the boiling sea on the horizon's edge of hearing.

A song.

 


	2. Most Wickedly I Did As I Sailed

_Thump-thump. Thump-thump._

It was unceasing.

_Thump-thump. Thump-thump._

Breathing in. Breathing out. His hands shook.

_Thump-thump. Thump-thump._

The ascot was choking and his coat was too wide for his frame. Or maybe he was too thin? Food no longer tasted as he remembered it.

_Thump-thump._

He raised a shaking hand to a face that was too clean, too smooth to belong to the man looking out from the green eyes he saw in the glass. There was a rage there still, a lawlessness.

_Thump-thump._

It hadn't gone, as he had hoped it would. The laughing wildness was there still, waiting in the quirk of his smile. Would it ever go? Would he ever wake one morning to see the man he had been gazing out at him?

_Thump-thump._

Did he want to?

_Thump-thump. Thump-thump._

His heart hammered against a dry throat. His heart. Just his, beating on unceasing and alone, relieved of its echo.

_Thump-thump._

He loathed his heartbeat now.

James turned from the mirror. He wanted to break it, shatter himself into uncountable pieces to be swept up and forgotten. He stared around his study without seeing, the fading light casting strange shadows on the unread rows of books. It was nearly time.

He quaffed off his brandy and poured himself another. Was it the third? He tilted the bottle; surely it wasn't the fourth? It could have been the first for all he felt. There was a dim unease in knowing that. He would need something more to put him out tonight, something that was enough to drown his dreams and watered brandy wasn't it.

His dreams were different these days, since his first night as a redeemed man. For so long his nights had been taken with wind and rain and death in a howling gale, but now...now _She_ was there. She with her soft, spiced lips and her hair that smelled of gunpowder and sea spray. She curled beside him and he dreamed of waves, her hands mapping the tides across his chest. She smiled at him, bare breasted, from astride his hips and her nails scraped his flesh. She smiled as the skin burst beneath her Siren's claws, blood welling in rivulets down his ribs. She smiled as her fingers sank through, deep, deep down to grip the bones. She smiled as they splintered and a purring shuddered down from her throat as she clutched the hot, pulsing thing at his core and clenched it tight. It tore from his chest and lay pulsing weakly in her blood-slick hands like a dying bird. He could feel himself laughing even as hot tears stained his face, weeping and hysterical as the soft blue of Grace's eyes bled black, her skin flushed a tawny rum-brown and her hair writhed into a wild, dark tangle. She leered at him, shark's eyes devouring him as her fingers tightened around his heart. “For what we want most,” she said, and his heart dissolved in a slow wash of sea water.

The brandy was gone, but Grace's eyes remained, burning the accusation into his marrow until his pulse pounded the word.

_Traitor. Traitor. Traitor._

She was the face of it. It was Elizabeth and Turner he had betrayed—and Sparrow, too, he supposed—but it was Grace's eyes that judged him guilty and Grace's hands that tore out his heart each night. He moved to draw a hand through his hair, but his fingers met the stiff edge of a wig and clenched into a fist. Every move restricted, strangled.

_You do not want this._

His fist struck the window frame. Was he really so easily bought? An empty rank was a poor thirty pieces of silver. Was that all it took?

_Traitor. Traitor. Traitor._

The rapping on his door sounded too much like gallows drums for his liking.

“Come,” he said, slipping the brandy glass back into the place it had so seldom left before; it had a much increased call to duty these days. He looked up to see Lieutenant Groves hovering uncertain in the doorway.

“The carriage is here, sir,” he said.

“That uniform looks revolting on you, Theo,” James replied. 

A hint of Theo's honest smile pricked his face. “It doesn't suit you so well, either,” he said.

James smoothed his hands nervously over the uniform; the cloth felt oily.

_Blue and yellow...Bleeding Christ!_

“Let's get this over and done with, shall we?” he said and strode through the door.

He could feel Theo following silently at his heels like an obedient dog. His deference felt unnatural, but once inside the carriage it was stifling. The air was thick with unasked and avoided questions, but for all the quips he was prone to making, Groves was a good soldier and would never speak his mind unless asked. James could feel the beginnings of a headache pressing his temples.

“What is it, Groves?” he said.

“Nothing, sir,” the Lieutenant answered far too quickly, his eyes fixed on some distant point past James' head.

James sighed. “How long have you been under my command, Lieutenant?”

“Six years, sir.”

“I would think that after those six years you would know there's no use lying to me. I'll ask you again: What is it you have to say?”

Groves' eyes twitched from their fixation on the carriage wall. “It would be insubordinate, sir.”

James felt as though some taut line cracked inside his head. “Christ, Theo!” he barked. “Speak your mind!”

Finally, Groves looked at him but his expression remained stoic. “Is that an order, sir?”

“Must it be?” James asked in return. “We were friends once, Theo. Weren't we?”

“Yes, we were friends.”

“Then as a friend, say what you've to say to me.”

James had not served with Theodore Groves so long as he had with Andrew Gillette, God rest his infernal Irish soul, but still he could read the man. Theo was angry and he was barely hiding it.

“You are one of the finest officers a man could hope to serve,” he said. “You always had an ear for my advice. For Andrew's advice.”

James' throat felt horribly dry and he resisted the urge to order the coachman to look lively and step to. He could feel where this was heading and the prospect of facing it without a glass in hand was a bleak one.

“There's been talk,” Groves continued. “Everyone knew about the storm soon enough. Some thought you were dead.”

“Did you?” James asked.

“No, sir,” Groves said. “ I never believed it. Every man of us prayed to see the _Dauntless_ on the horizon when the fighting began. The pirates were bolder from the day you sailed.”

“But you held them off.”  


“Aye, sir,” Groves said. In another life, his voice might have had the warmth of pride, but that was a life long gone to dust. “But at a higher cost than ever we would have paid with you at the helm.”

_Four hundred and thirty four souls..._

“I'm not so certain of that, Theo,” James said.

“No,” Theo said. “Neither am I.”

_Ah. Now we come to it._

“You were a brilliant commander, James,” he continued. “I don't know that you realized it, the loyalty you could inspire. The pride. Sailing under you, a man felt like a god. Andrew idolized you. We all did.”

_Christ, I need a drink._

“I used to wonder whether you noticed, but I know now. Of course you noticed! How could you not, the way we fawned over you?”

“Theo—”

“I know what happened out there, _sir_ ,” Theo spat. “I know exactly even if no one else does. You couldn't _miss_ a storm of that size and neither would Andrew. The bloody _powder monkies_ couldn't miss it! No, _you saw it_ and Andrew saw it. He tried to make you see reason, didn't he? How long did he beg you? Hours? And you, so desperate for glory, for vengeance for whatever other excuse you like, it doesn't matter because _Andrew is dead_. Andrew and all the others and for what? For you and your... _legacy_?” 

The tirade ended, replaced by the rattle and clop of horse and carriage. James exhaled the breath he didn't realize he'd been holding, and when he spoke his voice had a leaden deadness to it.

“Will that be all, Lieutenant?”

Groves looked at him, sharp as a blade, and James was sure he caught the sheen of tears on the other man's eyes. Andrew had been a close friend to them both, and he couldn't begrudge Groves his mourning; he couldn't manage even that much himself anymore. He could see in Groves' face that he had hoped a great deal to be reassured that his rage was baseless, that the god-like commander he had followed into so many battles over the years had not failed him and failed their sailors' trust.

_But I did. I failed them and I failed you._

“Yes, sir,” Groves said.

The rest of the ride was spent in silence, each man lost in his own maelstrom, one just imagining and one reliving, white-knuckled.

_Lord_ Cutler Beckett had naturally commandeered the governor's mansion for the evening's festivities, considering the man still had not vacated James' quarters at the fort. James had instead moved into the small house he had kept before but seldom used, preferring as he had to be nearer his ships and his work. If the hideous things Beckett had done to his map were any indication, his Lordship intended to remain in residence for the foreseeable eternity. That had been his first hint that Beckett was not, in fact, a man of similar character to himself as his letter had claimed. The fort map had been painted there in God only knew what year. The colors were fading, the coast lines long since proved innaccurate, but James had been fond of it with its fantastically mishapen continents and depictions of sea monsters that were more whimsical than they were alarming. When he had returned to Port Royal a year ago after crossing blades with corpses, those empty expanses and roving beasts had taken on a new vibrance that stirred the adventuring boy in him. Seeing that map filled in, rigid and graphed, the creatures of the deep obscured by ships of trade after having seen the denizens of the saddest Hell with his own eyes and with the beating heart of a legend in his hand, he had decided then and there that he did not like this chillingly efficient little man sitting at  _his_ desk, dwarfed by  _his_ chair.

He liked him even less now, holding court as he was in the governor's parlour. James was surprised to see Governor Swann himself standing beside Beckett, smiling and shaking hands, and he wondered if they would be able to find a moment to talk in all this nonsense. He had not seen Governor Swann at all since his return to civilized life; rumor was he had been ill. Thinner and more pallid than James remembered, he certainly looked as though he had been.

“Ah, and here we have the man of the hour!” Beckett said, not bothering to extend a hand. “Your timing is most suberb, Admiral. It is just now time for dinner.”  


James was hastily ushered forward into the dining room, but not before he noticed the governor had made a motion as if to greet him himself.

James had many fond memories of evenings spent in the Swann's dining room. In his life before, he had been something of a fixture at dinner times. Every so often a visiting noble or exceptional merchant would join them, but the governor's household was a small one and it had often just been the three of them; himself, the governor, and Elizabeth.

It had happened right here in this room. One fine autumn evening that seemed an eternity past, he had told a story that had been a trifle too coarse for a lady's ears. Before the governor could reprimand him or he could apologize for his offense, Elizabeth had laughed; a merry laugh, like sleighbells.

_The first stumble of a long fall._

Less than a year later, the seal on his promotion orders barely broken, he had approached the governor with his hat in his hands and asked for his blessing were his lovely daughter with her chiming laugh to accept his hand in marriage.

_And she did. For a day. For a price._

James found himself very concerned all of a sudden with the empty state of his glass.

“Welcome, friends,” Beckett said in that unctuous voice of his from the head of the table. “Before we begin, let us thank Governor Swann for so graciously opening his home for our convenience.”

The assembled guests applauded, James only half-heartedly when he saw the governor's strained smile.

_Something's rotten in the state of Denmark._

“We are here tonight to celebrate the investiture of an enterprise that has been a lifetime in the making,” Beckett continued and James noticed with an inner sigh of relief that the servants had begun mercifully filling wine glasses. “This enterprise would never have been possible without the considerable talents of my oldest colleague, Mr. Isaac Braddock.”

Beckett paused to begin an applause and the man to James' right inclined his head in appreciation.

“And of course, this dream of mine, this dream of the King's, would never have come to reality were it not for the steadfast service and dedication of your own Admiral James Norrington.”

James found it in himself to smile passably and give a quick nod, but his neck felt stiff and the knowing smirk on Beckett's face was setting his guts to boiling.  _'I know what you were,'_ that smirk said.  _'Never forget it.'_

_As if I could forget anything._

Beckett droned on, some drivel about glory for King and Company and James felt a pressure beginning to build inside his head. He was horribly thirsty, but Beckett was clearly preparing for a toast and so his just-filled glass sat waiting while he bit his tongue and tried to keep from fidgeting.

Aside from Groves, the governor, and his Lordship, there was not a familiar face at the table. They were Beckett's associates and cronies all, lords of commerce and their glittering, hawk-eyed ladies. It was a small gathering, but their apparent self-importance could have crowded the nave of Saint Paul's.

“And so if you will join me, let us raise our glasses to the King and the the prosperity of his empire: To good business!”

James intoned the words with the rest of the strangers and managed to take only a somewhat more substantial swallow than was polite. His reaction was harder to suppress.

_What in blazing Hell?_

It was not wine. It looked like wine, tasted a great deal like it even, but it was not. Glancing around, James saw no expressions of puzzlement, heard no polite but curious inquiries as to the identity of this fine, if strange, refreshment. Either this was a drink all the other guests were accustomed to or only his glass was affected; the way Beckett's eyes flickered towards him gave him the feeling it was the latter. The room was beginning to feel rather warm.

“Admiral Norrington,” said a voice to his right. “Formerly Commodore, I presume?”

James turned to the man—Braddock, Beckett had called him. He seemed on an age to himself, perhaps a little older even judging by the sprays of frost in his tawny hair, and there was a jovial set to his features that gave him an likeable demeanor.

“A correct presumption,” James said. “Have we met before this?”

“No, never,” the man said. “We've not even been properly introduced, thought I can hardly fault Cutler for the breach. He's a busy man these days. Isaac Braddock, agent of the East India Trading Company at your service.”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Braddock,” James said.

_Though not so pleased in your choice of friends._

“Please, Admiral, call me Isaac. I insist,” he said. “I've such little patience with formalities. Comes of living too long in the Colonies.”

“Are you certain we have not met before, even in passing?” James asked. There was a nagging familiarity about this man.

“Quite impossible, I'm afraid,” Isaac said. “The only time I have spent in Port Royal until now you were...out of port.”

“I take your meaning well enough,” James said and tried to occupy himself with his meal. Not so long ago just the thought of a meal like this would have had his mouth watering, but now his stomach seemed to have shriveled and the lamb that was so tender under his knife turned to dust on his tongue. A servant leaned in to refill his glass; he hadn't even noticed it was empty. He sipped at it—more wine that was not wine. A dull pain was beginning to pound between his eyes. He glanced up to the head of the table where Beckett was listening with politic politeness to an enthusiastic litany from a formidable looking matriarch in widow's black. Without seeming to divert his attention from her, the runtish lord tipped his glass to him and smiled a shark's smile. James returned the gesture. Whatever game it was Beckett was playing with him, he could hold his own.

_Can I, really?_

“If I may beg your indulgence for a moment, Admiral,” Isaac said. “There is a certain matter I wish to discuss with you.”

“A matter of some delicacy, it would seem,” James said.

“Quite,” Isaac said. “I am a man of two strict loyalties, Admiral. First to my family and second to my work. I am certain a man such as yourself can relate.”

_Traitor. Traitor. Traitor._

“Of course.”

“No doubt you are aware that a warrant was issued for your arrest in connection with an incident which took place last year?”

_Last year? Has it been a year?_

“I was aware of that, yes,” James said, forcing thoughts of who had first borne him that news to the recesses of his mind.

“It was I who issued it,” Isaac said. “The Company tasked me with investigating the Sparrow incident and I found you complicit.”

James managed to keep his voice level. “And why did you feel it necessary to tell me this?”

“Because now that we are colleagues, Admiral, I wish you to know it was not a decision made lightly or out of any personal grudge of morality,” Isaac said. “I made it in the best interests of the Company, as I make all such decisions. Whatever the unforeseen consequences.”

Was it his imagination or did Isaac's eyes flicker towards their host for just a moment? James was suddenly aware of the sleepless shadows beneath his new colleague's eyes.

“I bear you no ill will, Isaac,” he said and Isaac seemed honestly relieved. “But do your two loyalties never conflict?”

Isaac smiled, a wry half-smile that was sharply familiar. “Ah,” he said. “I have an adage, Admiral. Blood is thicker than water, more precious than gold.”

“That must afford you a great deal of surety,” James said. “I envy you.”

“How do you mean?” Isaac asked, but at that moment Beckett stood and announced it was time to go through to the ballroom for the evening's entertainment.

The governor's ballroom was not small, but the music and the shrill laughter and the swirling skirts made it stifling. Apparently though dinner had been a quiet affair, all of Port Royal society had been invited to dance in Beckett's new dawn of commerce.

James had enjoyed dancing in his life before. He had liked the precision of it and how much simpler it was to communicate his thoughts to a lady through a firmer grasp on her hand or spinning her with more abandon. It was easier than words and much more honest. Now, he wanted nothing to do with such honesty. He felt the heat of curious eyes that tried and failed to go unnoticed. He stood beside Beckett and shook hands and kissed fingers of strangers and old acquaintances alike, every greeting masking the same unspoken questions:

“ _Where has he been? Why is he returned? Is the entirely well?”_

“It would seem the mysterious manner of your return has caused something of a stir in the hearts of the eligible ladies,” Beckett said. James had not failed to notice; the fluttering of their fans as he bent to kiss their hands was a blessedly cool breeze. “You ought to avail yourself of this opportunity, Admiral,” he continued. “A man in your position could have his choice of the beauties.”

James glanced at a cadre of the creatures in question. Some he knew, others were strangers, most fell to fits of giggles, peeking over the edges of fans that beat like hummingbird wings.

“I find I am rather less eager for a wife than I have been previously, my lord,” he said.

“Yes, yes, of course,” Beckett said. “My apologies, Admiral.”

James grit his teeth and continued shaking hands and trading idle pleasantries but he could feel his resolve eroding. The pounding in his head had only worsened since dinner and he could feel trickles of sweat itching on the back of his neck.

“Ah, Isaac, my friend, welcome back! You've met our good Admiral, I believe?”

“I have, indeed,” Isaac said, shaking his hand in the first truly sincere greeting James had been afforded all evening. “And may I present to you my cousin, Miss Josephine Braddock, from Boston.”

James bent to kiss the lady's hand as he had uncounted times that night. His lips met black lace and an unmistakable scent rushed over him.

Gunpowder.

_Black lace. Gunpowder. A red dress too red at the hem._

“I am very pleased to meet you, Admiral.”

The dress was deep blue, not red, and high-collared. The voice was too high and timid, the deportment too shrinking, the North Sea eyes to wide and gentle. But there was no mistaking her features and the black lace gloves that smelled of gunpowder.

_Grace!_

“The pleasure is mine, Miss Braddock,” he managed to say. He was staring. He knew he was staring and he couldn't care. Grace _here_ of all places! Seeing him like _this_. He was suddenly horribly conscious of the ridiculousness that was formal uniform attire. She had seen him in the lowest of states and yet he felt far more embarrassed of himself now than he ever had over a bout of drunken idiocy on her ship.

_What is she doing here?_

“My dear Miss Braddock,” Beckett was saying, clasping her hands. “When Isaac told me you had accompanied him I could scarce believe it. It is so very good to see you again.”

_Again? Again? When was before?_

“Thank you, Lord Beckett,” Grace said in a voice so soft and tremulous James could almost believe her fragility. “It was...time, I thought.”

_Look at me, damn you! Why are you here?_

“Is this your first time in Port Royal, Miss Braddock?” he asked, hoping for the hint of a smile, a knowing look, a sly reference, _anything_ to acknowledge that _she_ was here and _he_ was here, but her eyes grew even wider and she took a short gasp of breath as though shocked.

“Yes, Admiral, it is,” she said. “I...I do not... _sail_ much.”

There was terror in her eyes, James realized. Honest, unfeigned terror that he had never seen in her before. It was so unfamiliar coupled with everything else that doubt began to nag him. Was this really Grace at all? Or truly some spun-glass waif from Boston to whom she bore a resemblance so uncanny they would have to be twins?

_No, damn it! I know it's you!_

“Miss Braddock, would you do me the honor of a dance?” he asked as he heard the opening strains of an allemande; a close dance, perfect for discreet conversation.

She took another of those short gasps and Isaac seemed to support her for a moment.

“Do you feel well enough, cousin?” he said.

“Yes, Isaac,” she said and smiled very cautiously. “Yes, I think so.”

James extended his hand to her and she rested hers in it with barely more pressure than a songbird, as though she feared he wouldn't release her. He had the sense that her whole being was hovering on tip-toe, poised like a deer who's scented the hounds, ready to bolt at any provocation. They took their places and as the music began he bowed, eyes never leaving her face. She curtsied back, never once looking at his.

“What are you doing here?” he hissed as he pulled her into the first turn. 

“Oh, I—I am here with my cousin, sir,” she answered, still in that breathless voice, still with no hint of recognition. She turned him under her arm, now.

“Grace, please. Stop this!”

“Pardon me for the correction, Admiral,” she said. “My name is Josephine.”

James bit back his frustrated retort, knowing that if he pushed her too far in this persona she would likely shriek or faint or something more creative of equal disturbance. Their hands linked behind their backs and James suppressed a grin. She could cover her scars and soften her sailor's hands in lace, but no layers of silk and stays and cotton or dainty behavior could rid her of the sea-sculpted strength in her arms.

“Of course, miss. My apologies,” he said. “It is just that you remind me very much of a lady I once knew.”

She said nothing as they spun through the final rosette. He kissed her fingers once more as he bowed, but gripped them tight as she tried to pull away. She made a tiny sound, a kittenish whimper.

“Yes, you remind me of her very much,” he said. “You are both so very good at lies.”

She whipped her hand from his and gave him an unsteady curtsy. She allowed him to escort her from the floor but averted her eyes from him and all but collapsed into Isaac's arms.

“I am sorry, Isaac, I do think I have rather overtaxed myself in the dance,” she breathed. “I hope his Lordship and the Admiral would not find me rude were I to take my leave?”

“Not at all, my dear,” Beckett said, kissing her hands. “We shall have a quieter gathering just for your pleasure very soon.” 

“Thank you, my lord,” she said, and turned to James. “Thank you for the dance, Admiral. It was most kind of you.”

James nodded and then she and Isaac were gone, swallowed up in the cacophony of merrymakers. He wanted to follow her. He wanted to shake her and rattle the lace and the pearls and the wide-eyed fear right off her. It was his captain he wanted to see, not this timid mouse of a society lady whose name she wore like an actor's frock.

“An extraordinary creature, is she not?” came Beckett's silky voice from below his left shoulder. “To have been through such trials and horrors. No doubt you noticed her crippling humility; I'm afraid you've quite turned her head, the poor thing.”

To James' surprise, there was no hint of smugness or mockery in Beckett's tone. By all accounts he felt genuine pity for this character of Grace's invention and James couldn't help but be a little pleased at the completeness of her ruse, though what end it served in her illegal exploits he couldn't guess.

“Forgive me, Lord Beckett,” he said. “But I do not believe I am aware of the history of the lady in question.”

“Ah, you have not heard of Miss Braddock? Her story is most exciting and unfortunate, not so unlike what transpired here involving another young lady of good breeding,” Beckett said. James didn't need to look down to know Beckett was giving him one of those sidelong smirks, watching for even the smallest reaction to his careful barbs. James clenched his hands behind his back to stop their trembling.

“The story goes,” Beckett continued. “That she was booked passage to the Colonies when the ship was savagely commandeered by pirates. The lady herself was held, presumably for ransom though no notice was ever delivered, and God only knows what other unspeakable uses. The pirates were hunted of course, but to no avail. She was given up for dead until one day she appeared at Nassau, raving mad, naturally. Nearly four years captive, can you imagine? She's not been seen in these parts since. Isaac keeps her in comfort, in a country house of his I understand. It is rather a tragic tale, Admiral. I'm surprised you were unaware of it.”

“It is familiar in some respects, but it must have been before my time,” James said. The story did ring a bell or two. Some local gab about an improbable rescue only a few weeks after a stalwart and zealous young lieutenant had arrived in Port Royal with the governor to begin his rise to glory and fame. 

_What a damn bloody fool he turned out to be._

“Begging pardon, my lord,” he said. “But I believe it is time I took my leave as well.” 'Miss Braddock' had vanished, and James' last vestiges of composure and patience had vanished with her.

“Ah, Admiral, so soon?” Beckett said, his voice more like oily silk than ever. “This fine night is yet young and brimming with potential.”

The night could be as young as it pleased; he was painfully thirsty and the pounding in his head was edging towards unbearable.

“I thank you for your generous hospitality, my lord,” he said. “But truth be told, I have never been fond of events such as these. I find I much prefer the quiet of my study.”

Beckett smiled indulgently. “Of course, Admiral, of course. Far be it from me to deter a dutiful man such as yourself from applying his energies where most needed. I bid you goodnight.”

James bowed and had to mind himself not to let a recently habitual languidness creep into the motion. Ducking behind a group or two of revelers he managed to escape the sweltering hall unnoticed.

_The guest of honor goes missing and they all keep dancing._

It was only when he was halfway home in the blissfully quiet carriage that he realized he had not told Groves he was leaving. It didn't bother him more than fleetingly; the man wouldn't have come and James' head was a hurricane of need for drink and thoughts of Grace. And a latent need for her, too, if he was honest.

It had been months since Tortuga, months and leagues and treacheries. And he had been coping. He dreamed and he drank until he was empty, but he was functioning. He walked, he talked, he wore the uniform. What else was there?

_Toy soldier on strings...Damn her!_

His thirst and his head and his thoughts had put him in a foul mood. The blank state he worked so hard to maintain was gone, splintered like so much wood in a broadside. He began tearing off his absurd uniform as soon as the door latched behind him, leaving a trail of false honor to his study until he was stripped of all but his own shirt and breeches. He even kicked his shoes to unknown dark corners. He managed to light a candle and faced himself in the mirror. The reflection was abhorrent. He tore the wig from his head and flung it, too, into the darkness; he had never liked the bloody things anyway. He'd cut his hair when he regained his life, he'd had to for the blasted wig, but it was longer than he'd kept it before and it was a mess now. A mess just like the rest of him. He drew back a fist to crush the man he saw in the mirror, but at the last moment he snarled and tore open his desk cabinet instead. He reached in for the bottle of rum he kept there, but his hand met nothing. He couldn't have finished it already?

“I'm impressed, James. From scoundrel to admiral in so short a time. I congratulate you.”

There it was. There was the voice he knew, lower than most women and that hint of strange music. He sighed, laughing a little, but didn't look up to see her. He stared down at the shambles of his desk as if he could find some sense in the mess of maps and forms.

_What would I see this time?_

“Have you come to kill me, Captain?” he asked. Liability to her as he was now, he couldn't quite bring himself to blame her.

“Hardly. And you needn't call me captain. Or have you forgotten?” came the reply from the shadows behind him. 

_Yellow hair on a blue coat. Strong arms and quiet words in the darkness. Traitor. Traitor. Traitor._

Forgotten? How could he forget?

“Leave, Grace,” he said. “Before I have to arrest you.”

She laughed and finally he looked at her. The timidity was gone, replaced by the boldness that belonged there. Even without pistols on her hips, dressing the lady lent her an air of hypnotic detachment that was almost reptilian. And yet for all her presence had thrown his ballast, a part of him smiled to see her again, even like this.

_Damn her!_

“An empty threat, James,” she said. “You can't very well arrest me for piracy when the crown pays me for it. That _is_ your job, is it not? To cleanse the seas of me and my ilk?”

In the dim light from the candle he could see her grinning, mocking. His rank was a sham and she knew it as well as he pretended not to. She was knifing into his doubts, just as she'd always been able to and it was pricking his temper, just as it had before.

“I could tell them about Skinner,” he said. 

Grace sighed, twirling her fan between her still gloved fingers. “You won't do that any more than you'll arrest me.”

“And why not? Out of some misguided sentiment, I suppose?”

James felt the shift in her bearing more than he saw it. She never moved from her position, but the space between them seemed to have shrunk to a crackling proximity. They were at it now, like dogs in the ring, teeth bared and wary to see who would bite first and hardest. He supposed he shouldn't bait her as he was, but she was the invading force here and after months of groveling and blind agreeing he was just longing for an argument, any argument, so long as he could scream.

“Besides having to admit you were my accomplice?” Grace said. 

“You deceived me, as you well know,” James retorted. “And I've been pardoned of all crimes.”

_Traitor. Traitor. Traitor._

“Ah, of course! How foolish of me to forget!” Grace exclaimed, launching back into the timorous Miss Josephine. “By all means, Admiral, make your assertions that this poor, troubled lady is a ruthless smuggler and master of deception!” She scoffed and returned to herself. “All it would be is your word, and who here trusts you enough to take anything on your word alone? You don't even trust yourself, do you?”

“What do you mean by that?” James asked, noticing too late that her smile was too sly. She was up to something and she was talking him right off the plank.

_There are worse fates, I suppose._

“I am merely concerned that you may be experiencing some difficulty in returning so abruptly to your former station,” she said. 

“And why, pray tell, would I find that so difficult?” James said, ignoring his pulse's phantom echo and swallowing past his thirst.

For a moment Grace seemed to start forward, but her hands clenched in her skirt and her words came out in an uncustomary tumble.

“Because despite yourself you were happy.”

James had never prided himself on his understanding of women, but even he was not so dull that he couldn't hear the unspoken 'with me' that remained locked behind her teeth. She was right. He had been happy with her and happy had been the problem.  _She_ had been the problem, and from the taut stillness in her posture he could see she suspected as much. He could feel the truth on his tongue, his body willing him to fall to her feet and kiss her hands and beg her to liberate him from this sour salvation, but Grove's anger and his grief came back to him and quelled that desperation. 

_No. This is your lot now. This._

He forced himself to smile, however thinly, and even managed a bit of a chuckle. “Nonsense, Grace. I am not finding this at all difficult. In fact, it is as if I'd never left.”

“Is that so?” Grace said, her eyes narrowing. She plucked a bottle from the bookshelf and gave it a pointed shake. “This begs to differ.”

“Put that away!” James snarled, moving towards her, unable to keep the thirst from his voice and he knew she heard it, too. 

“Of course,” Grace said coolly, but she set the bottle back where she had hidden it. “Mustn't let anyone know the admiral still has a taste for rotgut rum.”

James slumped against his desk with a sigh, aware suddenly of his bare feet and shaggy hair and how grotesque his indignation must seem to her. Even from the day they'd met, Grace had been able to unravel his pretenses; a few months and all the Hell he'd seen hadn't changed that.

_Who do you see when you look at me?_

“What is it you want, Grace?” he said.

“Oh, James,” Grace said, shaking her head. Finally, at last, she came close to him and James could feel the expanse of every day he had not seen her. “Why must I be here because I want something? Can't it be I just wish to see you?”

She touched him, just a hand on his cheek, the lace of her glove a whisper against his skin, and he did not expect the ache it caused him. True, he had missed her and terribly at times, but he had not thought he missed her quite like this, where a touch so simple and soft could both twist the knife and balm the wound it made.

“Are you so different now from the man on my ship who was such a friend to me?” she asked.

James couldn't meet her eyes. He knew what this was, what it cost her to ask him such a question, to allow him a glimpse of the person behind her many masks. Why did she have to be so honest with him now?

“That man no longer exists,” he said. Pushing her hand away and himself away from her.

_He can't exist, not ever again._

He had thought to leave the room, abandon her there in hopes she would simply remove herself the way she'd come, but he hadn't gone two steps when her words stopped him.

_I never can leave a room with her in it._

“You're angry with me.”

_No._

“Yes,” he said. It wasn't a lie, not completely.

“ _You're_ angry with _me_ ,” Grace said again, and the bitterness was almost palatable. “You have no right to be.”

_I know. I know. It's a fool's anger, just let me feel it and be done!_

“Oh, I think I do,” James said, turning back to face her and however misguided he knew his rage to be, it filled him all the same. It was better than guilt; easier to bear when sober.

“Don't give me that! Don't even dare! It was you who left me in case you've forgotten!” Grace said, charging towards him, and James wondered briefly if she would hit him. “I looked for you,” she said, and James felt the air to out of him as though she had indeed knocked him flat. “Oh, yes. I looked for you. Where did you go? Did you find some whore to please you better?”

And the dam he had tried to build crumbled. Despair or rage or something far worse than either overcame him and he had her by the shoulders, shaking her.

“What do you want from me? What do you want from me, Grace, what?” he said, unsure whether he was accusing her or begging her. It didn't matter as long as she heard, as long as she knew. “What can I say to you? I was losing myself in your world, in _you.”_ He stopped shaking her, but his hands gripped her more tightly as if he could will understanding in through her flesh. “And I wanted it. My God, I wanted it. But I couldn't become that, I couldn't!” 

He expected her to tear out of his grasp and scream back at him or walk away from him without a word, but all she did was look at him. She looked at him and James saw a sadness there he had never seen before, not even the night she had sobbed in his arms.

“But that _was_ you already,” she said.

She was right. He had always known. Or was she? Denials and affirmations were spinning in his pounding head, tangling up with apologies and declarations he could never make. He voiced none of them, but Grace saw their shadows as she always did.

“I know you, James. I know you better than you know yourself,” she said and then she was kissing him. Finally. Again, after so long. He pulled her into him, hungrier for her or for the rum he tasted on her lips he couldn't say. As suddenly as the kiss had begun it ended, and in a blink she had seemed to cross the room to the door where she paused. 

“Goodnight, Admiral,” she said. “We shall see each other again before long, I trust.”

And she was gone.

James stood where she had left him, dumbfounded and disheveled, until he heard the street door open and close and the silence following that ripple of a sound was deafening. Mind reeling, he moved to the bookshelf to retrieve the bottle of rum and with a numb jolt realized it had been emptied by more than a few hearty mouthfuls. But no matter...she had left him just enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of you might be interested to know that the ending scene in James' study is the scene that inspired this entire adventure. I was falling asleep after seeing 'Dead Man's Chest' at midnight with a friend and it came to me almost as its written here. I knew nothing about Grace at the time but her name and that she was someone James knew from the time between the events of the first two films. It's been nine years since then, and she is definitely here to stay.


	3. The Lass That Loves a Sailor

The small sound of the door closing was like a canon blast to her.

“Heave to and surrender,” Grace muttered to herself and stifled the laughter that threatened to spill from her lips. She could taste him there still, faintly sweet and a little sharp; metallic, almost, and so very _good_. She cursed herself for the heat that rushed through her at the thought.

_It's the rum. It has to be._

She should not have drunk so much of it. Or any. But seeing it there, tucked away in his desk like the secret shame she supposed it was had angered her. She had felt herself absurdly in connection with that bottle, as though it represented everything about the man she _knew_ was still there and the life he had shared with her, however briefly. To see him confining that to shadowy corners and burying himself in brocade and that sinfully ugly uniform...too much. It was all too much.

She walked, as fast as she could encumbered in petticoats, driven by a sudden impulse to put as much of the thick, night air between herself and James as she could. She felt tears pooling in her eyes and she held her breath to dam them up. Why did it matter so much? He was just a man. Nothing but a man.

_And a turncoat drunk at that!_

Her feet had carried her to the doors of a small church and she stopped. There was a calm about the place, as Grace found she felt around all houses of God, whether her god's or not. The air was warm and cloying with perfumes of flowers and fruits and that sacred, earthy scent of fresh water. She drew it into her and around her, wondering as she had as a child if she breathed deeply enough she could dissolve into the air and live like an angel. It would be easier by far, she thought looking up at the church, to be a soldier of God locked in war eternal than to confine this immensity of feeling in so small and mortal a form. Already she could feel it battering at her and it would soon tear her to pieces.

_I can't afford such a surrender._

The rum had made her dizzy, helped along by the horrible terror that had been clawing at her stomach from the moment she set foot on shore and she sat down on the steps of the church to let her head clear. That terror had fueled the rum, but the rum was lending liberty to the desire that had damn near buckled her knees the moment James had looked at her in his study. She had cocooned herself in her act at the reception, so tense with affected skittishness that she didn't feel his voice or notice his eyes. But his study had been another matter. The bitterness over his leaving and the hurt she pretended wasn't there had bubbled up through her better judgment, and she had wanted to make him answer for it; for his leaving, for his damn fool choices, for making her wait in port three days more to look for him.

_For making me long for him._

She'd meant to keep the upper hand, to scathe him with her detachment but it had all come apart. As it always had, his chaos drew her like North drew a needle. She had admitted more than she'd intended, far more, and she knew he had taken notice. What he thought of what he'd learned was beyond her.

Grace shivered a little, running her hands over where he had gripped her, and she couldn't help but remember that same grip around her wrists and twined in her hair. ' _I wanted to'_. That's what he'd said. He had wanted to stay with her and if the marks she was sure to have on her arms were any measure, he had meant it.

_Then why did you go?_

She should not have kissed him. That had been her worst mistake, though an inevitable one if she was honest with herself. To be so close after so long, and him in such undress, was a temptation no man or woman could have resisted, but from the instant her lips touched his she knew she was doomed. There would be no recovery from him, not wholly; he was the one who would break her.

The men knew something was amiss with her, though she thought it likely only Richard suspected the cause. He would never broach the subject with her, he was too mindful of her authority, even after all they'd seen together, but his concern showed in a sturdy hand on her back and mugs of mulled wine offered without a word on cold nights. How had it come to this? How had she let James become so ingrained in her that she had taken such a risk to see him?

_How Danny would laugh if he could see me!_

She could just hear him now, _“Ah, what's this? My dego lady losin' her fire? Not a word of it!”_ Daniel had been on her mind more and more lately, ever since that strange night when a phantom song had rolled across the waves and Isaac had told her all in whispers of the maddest scheme ever conceived by Man. The arrogance of it! It was almost spectacular.

_I'd be impressed if I hadn't the sense to be afraid._

Cutler was bargaining with forces far beyond his ken, as Daniel had, as Jack had, as even she had and so many others. The order was thrown a-kilter and there was nothing for it now but to drop canvas and ride the squall until the world put herself to rights. But there would be blood paid in the righting. That was the way of things.

“ _Nothing come free, ti sè.”_

The memory sent a chill crawling over her. Such grim thoughts had settled her head. She couldn't worry herself over James alone, not with what was coming, what had already begun. Grace stood and looking up at the dark windows of the church whispered a quick prayer. But underneath it she found herself wondering whether for all her prayers the God of her mother held any sway over these waters at all.

* * *

 

The morning dawned bright and warm, cheery and agreeable by all accounts and yet Grace found it disconcerting. She never did get used to sleeping on solid ground, not entirely. The large beds and the warm air made for a pleasant change, but the longer she stayed ashore the more she found she missed the creaking hull and the waves rolling beneath her, even the hourly bells the crew kept without her asking. The privacy she had aground was almost desolate; her men were an uncouth lot, but the air was empty without their shanties and their laughing, even their occasional brawling. Here, the rooms were unnerving in their hugeness, the floorboards never pitched, and she couldn't navigate the avenues and alleyways to save her son's soul. At sea, her life made sense. It was only when she came ashore that it all rushed down to the depths of Hell.

Grace dressed alone, as no lady of her stature would have had her life fallen out as a lady's ought to have done. Had her life gone as planned, as expected, she would be many years married to some dashing and prosperous fellow in the Colonies and mother to more than a single son who did not know her, captaining the affairs of a household rather than a ship. Her body would be unmarked by lash and bullet, free of pain even in the depths of a winter night. Her children would grow with her by their side, in turn they would marry and come to place grandchildren in her arms until the day when she would relinquish her body to be committed to the ground, and not the deep. What an unremarkable life that would be!

_But none more worthwhile._

She stood up from her dressing table, pushing the phantoms of might-have-been to the back of her mind. They were no use to her and she had no time for them, however bittersweet they might be. The sea had pulled the thread of her life into her weave long ago; perhaps that had always been its path. These ghosts of what-if were noisome, and the living here and now was trouble enough.

Isaac was up and already looking harried despite the early hour she saw when she entered the dining room. The crumpled remains of formerly important missives were strewn about his plate and the egg and toast in front of him were untouched, for hours if she knew him. Grace helped herself to tea—she never could eat much at this hour—and waited. He worked hard, her cousin. Too hard. And this newest venture had him in such a bind of morals and money that he would miss the birth of his first child. In truth he risked missing far more. There was a heavy price to be paid for trifling with Davy Jones, the price for binding him was sure to be far greater still. But she had kept quiet on that score.

“Three days.”

“Beg pardon?” Grace said.

Isaac crushed his last missive and leaned over the table, rubbing his permanently sunken eyes. “Three days and it begins,” he said. “The _Endeavor_ joins the armada.”

A jolt of icy fear, sharp as a Cape Horn wind, sliced through her and even the tea made her stomach churn.

“Isaac, you can't mean to go!” she said.

“I have no choice.”

Grace crashed the cup down, tea churning over the brim and soaking into her gloves. “You do! Let Cutler play out his fool's game of chess with the gods and go home!”

_Go home. Go inland. Go where he can't reach you!_

Isaac shook his head. “Cutler needs me in this, Grace. Someone has to be the Company's eyes in a fleet of this size.”

“Why?” she asked. “Is the Admiral not enough to control them?”

“He's a good man,” Isaac said. “I don't doubt his competence. But he is not a Company man, not really, and his history...it gives me cause for some unease.”

Grace felt a sudden flush bloom and she sipped at her half-empty tea to hide it. “In what way?”

Isaac waved a dismissive hand and nibbled at his cold toast with a sigh. “I don't wish to tarnish your opinion of him.”

“You won't,” Grace said, a little too hotly to her ears.

Isaac arched an eyebrow at her. “Why, cousin, if I didn't know better I'd say the Admiral had quite struck that stony heart of yours.”

“He's not...unpleasant to the eye, though you know my feelings where _wigs_ are concerned,” Grace said. Sometimes the best disguise was a fragment of truth, so she had learned. “And I found him very courteous.”

_When he wants to be!_

“I thought he'd caught your eye,” Isaac said, his smile warming from teasing to affectionate. “You caught his as well or I'm a vicar. I should like to see you settled with a man like that, Grace. You deserve that life, and I know you want it.”

A numbness settled into her at Isaac's words, and she let it seep through her. She knew the spitting vitriol and ache that lurked beneath it, and the deadened blankness was better. “Don't speak of what isn't possible, Isaac,” she said, and dredged up a spry smile. “Besides, you wouldn't want me bartered off to a man of questionable history, would you?”

“I only question his loyalty, not his character. Not entirely,” Isaac said. “By all reports he's the most fine and honorable man on God's green earth.”

“But?” Grace prompted.

“But I wonder at the manner of his return to civilized life after his stint as a fugitive,” Isaac said. “Apparently Cutler's man Mercer found him in Tortuga, drunk and turned pirate—Bleeding Christ, Grace! Are you all right?”

Her breath seemed to have been sucked from her lungs and the room felt suddenly storm-tossed. Mercer. It had been Mercer. The shredded paper now made sense. Mercer had found him and there had been a letter, from Beckett no doubt. But what had been its contents? What contract had been offered? And what had been so jarring that James had vanished without a word?

“Grace?”

Isaac's hand on her shoulder snapped her back to the present moment.

“Yes...what?”

“You went white as a sheet for a moment,” Isaac said. “Are you feeling quite well?”

_Better. So much better I'm almost ashamed!_

“Yes, yes, I'm fine, Isaac. Don't worry yourself. Perhaps I'd better partake in some breakfast after all.”

She swiped a piece of toast from his unguarded plate with a grin that she could only hope hid what was fairly bursting underneath. She'd not been cast off afterall.

“All the same, he's a singular man, the Admiral,” Isaac continued. “I should like to know more of him. I don't suppose you might be able to ferret a bit of his story from him?”

“Me?” Grace exclaimed. “What on earth could I do in this guise? A man as honorable as the Admiral clearly is would never shock a lady of such delicate constitution with talk of rum and disgrace and God knows what else in the alleys of Tortuga!”

“As ever, cousin, you underestimate your natural appeal in this guise,” Isaac said with a smile. “A man may bare the darkest recesses of his soul to a pretty woman who shows him sympathy. Especially if she makes a fuss over his sufferings. I trust you won't find it _too_ hard to fawn on him?”

_Oh, a very thorough fawning and no trouble!_

“And how exactly am I to contrive an appropriate circumstance for such a scheme?”

“Quite simple. He and Cutler are to take tea here this afternoon.”

Grace's heart dropped into her stomach, but at least this time she managed to keep her color.

* * *

 

The morning passed in slow grinds and sudden starts. Grace tried to read but found her mind too fidgety to stay in the story. She fussed with her hair and her choice of gown, and eventually begged a needle and thread and a pile of mending from the housekeeper. Far from thinking it unusual or lowly, the rough-handed woman had been pleased. Far too few of “her sort” had the skill for anything practical, she'd said. Grace had been rather good at that impractical kind of stitching before, though she doubted her hands remembered much of it now. There wasn't much call for embroidery in repairing sail cloth. She let herself drift in the simple stitches and by the time Isaac called on her to join him in the sitting room, she felt quite calm. She slipped her gloves on, a cream lace this time, and took her cousin's arm.

“As soon as possible I'll suggest to Cutler that I require his attention for sensitive Company business and ferry him off to the study,” Isaac said.

 “Leaving an unmarried woman alone with an unmarried man?” Grace said. “God help your daughter if Anna should give you one!”

“You can talk your way out of being murdered by pirates but not out of needing a chaperone?” Isaac hissed and they both paused for a moment before entering the sitting room.

The serenity Grace had so carefully cultivated in her hours of mending withered when her eyes fell on him. James was out of uniform. She hadn't expected that. His deep green coat suited him well and though he wore a wig it was a plain dark auburn, not powdered as he'd worn at the reception. He was beautiful.

“Cutler, Admiral. Welcome!” Isaac said, sweeping into the room in that convivial way he had. “Please make yourselves comfortable. We shall have our tea presently.”

“I shall pour, shall I, Isaac?” Grace said, pitching her voice higher and sweeter than it ever had been, even before a decade of barking orders.

“That would be a delight, my dear,” Cutler said, taking her hand and kissing her fingers. She saw James clench his fist.

_Oh, that bothers him does it?_

“Admiral,” she said, turning to him with a small curtsy. “It is so pleasant to see you again.”

“The pleasure is mine, Miss Braddock,” James said, and when he kissed her hand she swore he pressed his lips to it a little too firmly, that his touch lingered a little too long before he released her. “Though I feel I must express my apologies for last night. I was unaware you had been in poor health and it was most crass of me to subject you to such exertion. I pray I have not hampered your recovery.”

Grace felt her face flush and despite herself a hint of a true smile slipped through her disguise. She could see in his eyes it wasn't the dance the previous night he was apologizing for, but for what he'd said after.

“My dear Admiral, of course you haven't!” she said. “It was only that the crowd was so stifling! As you see, here among friends I am quite well.”

James inclined his head to her, every inch the gentleman, just as the maid entered with the tea things and everyone took their seats.

“Tell me, how are you finding our little corner of civilization, Miss Braddock?” Cutler asked her as she poured.

“I had quite forgotten the thickness of the air in these climes,” she said, passing him his cup. “It is quite crisp in Boston by comparison, even in summer. Still, it seems a much more...hospitable place now than it was.”

She cringed a little and Isaac squeezed her hand as if on cue. In a way it was. This was a double act they had perfected over the years. Their every move was calculated to garner sympathy, and with great success.

“My cousin tells me I have you to thank for that improvement, Admiral,” she continued, pouring the cup that would be his. She paused. “Oh. Begging your pardon, how do you take your tea?”

She knew the answer of course: three lumps, no cream. He had a bit of a sweet tooth, her James.

_He is not mine._

Judging by the smirk threatening to tug at James' mouth, he knew the blunder she'd nearly made and he was more than a little amused by it.

“I've done my duty to His Majesty in these seas, Miss Braddock, which is all any man would do,” he said. “Three sugars, if you would be so kind.”

“Ah, come now, Admiral! Ever the model servant of the Crown, modest to the bone!” Cutler said, laughing. “Isaac is, of course, entirely correct, Miss Braddock. Admiral Norrington is quite the legend, he is simply too much a gentleman to admit it.”

“Now, now, there's not shame in modesty, Lord Beckett,” Grace said. “A humble man is an Godly man, my mother always said.”

She passed James his cup of tea and damn him if he didn't caress the back of her hand as he took it from her! For the second time, her cheeks warmed and her heart ran wild in her chest.

_Oh, I could kill him for that!_

“A wise woman,” James said. His smile was pleasant, but his eyes had a curious intensity.

“Yes, she was, God rest her,” Grace said and this time she had no need to feign her expression. The ache of that loss was with her still, though thinking back on it seemed more like trying to see stars through thick glass as the years went by.

“My condolences, Miss Braddock,” James said. “I did not know.”

He had known, of course, but he hadn't been the one to broach the subject.

“Thank you, Admiral,” she said. She noticed Isaac had begun his maneuver, having drawn Cutler into an earnest conversation. “But it was long ago. I was only a girl when she died. My father brought me here not long after.”

There was a tidbit she hadn't told him, and she saw the slight narrowing of his eyes as he added it to the puzzle of her he was no doubt solving in his head. He leaned forward to set down his already empty cup.

“It is a great shame so sad a life should be lived by one so lovely,” he said as she moved to refill it. His voice. She had forgotten how...low it could be. It sparked over her skin like the brush of his nails up her spine and her head spun. He was trying to unhinge her, the bastard, and it was working.

_Damn you!_

“As sad as your own, perhaps,” she said and touched his hand with the most cloying smile she could muster. It was more effort than she liked to draw her hand back again.

“I doubt that very much, Miss Braddock,” he said.

“Begging your pardon, cousin,” Isaac interrupted before Grace could respond. No doubt he had overheard the turn of their conversation. “Lord Beckett and I must attend to an important Company matter. My apologies, Admiral.”

“Not at all, Isaac,” James said. “Your cousin is most refreshing company for me. My usual companions are not nearly so pleasant.”

He smiled at her, just warmly enough to warrant her a properly girlish grin back and Isaac to raise his eyebrows.

“We'll not be long,” Isaac said and he and Cutler—finally—left the room.

James laughed and the atmosphere of the room changed so fast Grace thought her ears would pop from it.

“You're very good, Captain,” he said, standing and helping himself to the brandy at the sideboard. “Very good.”

“You've not made it easy,” Grace said.

“Isaac is a part of it, isn't he? He'd have to be,” James said and suddenly laughed again. “But of course, how else are you able to ferry your wares right under the nose of the East India Trading Company? My God, how long have the two of you been at this?”

“James—”

“Is he even truly your cousin?”

Grace clenched her jaw. “Nine years,” she bit out.

“Ah, there it is. You'll answer that but not the other.”

“James, please—”

“Once a pirate, always a pirate,” he said. “You needn't remind me.”

Grace noticed then the way he was standing. There was a bit of a swagger in the slight slump of his shoulders and a rakishness in his gait that was a far cry from the starched and buttoned Admiral she had met the night before. He carried himself now the way she remembered. She had been right; the life had got into his bones after all.

“So it would seem,” she said and couldn't help herself smiling.

“Oh, aye, Captain,” he said. “I'm more a pirate now than when I left you. The irony of it! Ha!”

Smirking at her, he tossed back his glass in one swallow. He made to pour another, immediately another, and Grace was on her feet. A pirate was clearly not all he was more of since he'd left.

“That's _enough_ , James,” she said, gripping his wrist. For a moment she thought he meant to fight her, but as he slowly set his glass down she realized her mistake. The fire in his eyes was something else entirely. She should not have touched him.

The fingers of his free hand swept along her neck and there was a breathless heartbeat as his thumb brushed over her lips. Was that his pulse or her own she felt thundering under her skin?

“James, don't—” she started, but then he was kissing her. The brandy burned on his tongue and all that mattered was the heat of his hands and the long line of his body and the hitch of his breath when she tugged his hips toward her.

_Damn these skirts!_

She drew her teeth along his bottom lip, savoring the soft fullness of his mouth, so hungry to devour him again but needing him to stop or she would never be able to stop herself.

“Stop! Please, my God!” she gasped and forced her hands off him, but she couldn't push him away and even the breath he took to gather control of himself made her whimper. He braced his hands against the wall at her back, not touching her but close. Too close.

“Grace, I need you,” he murmured and his words were almost a groan. “Please.”

He pressed his lips so very softly to the hollow behind her ear and her knees nearly buckled from the surging ache between her thighs. She pulled herself to him and he hissed, shuddering with a growling laugh as her nails bit into the back of his neck. Lord on high, that grin of his was almost enough to make her throw all caution to the wind!

“Ten o'clock,” she said, one hand oh his chest to keep herself off him. “You know where to go and who to ask for.”

“Ten o'clock,” James agreed and mercifully moved away from her. But before she was free and clear he caught her hand and inched back the edge of her glove to kiss the underside of her wrist. “That's long hours from now.”

“If I can survive it, so can you,” Grace said, pulling her hand out of his grasp and situating herself back in her former position.

_Though I'm not so certain I will._

She closed her eyes and tried to slow her blood from racing. She heard James pour and throw back another brandy, but there was nothing she could do about that now. If she touched him again, alone in the room like this—Hell, even if they argued—she would have to haul him out the parlour window for a tryst in the gardener's shed and be caught in the unpleasant position of fabricating some excuse about a tour of the house to her cousin while praying there were no leaves in her hair. And that was one sort of lie Isaac was bound to see through, practiced as he himself was at making them.

James collapsed into his place opposite her across the tea table, running a hand over his face. She could feel him looking at her.

“Your ah...” he paused and cleared his throat. “Your hair is a little...”

Grace's hands flew to her head. “A little what? Is it terribly obvious?”

“Some sort of loose bits in the back,” he said.

“I wonder whose fault that could be,” Grace said, sweeping the few strands up and tucking them away best she could. James was still watching her, a strange expression on his face. “What is it?”

“It's a curious thing,” he said. “Seeing you here, surrounded by all this. I'd never have imagined it. Doesn't seem fitting somehow.”

“You know I wasn't always a pirate and a smuggler, James,” she said.

“I know that,” he answered with a sigh. “I know that and little else.”

Grace bit her lip at the unexpected pang his words caused. “I'm sorry,” she said. “It's simply too dangerous, especially now. Maybe someday—”

“Someday!” James said with a bitter laugh. “What someday could possibly come after this?”

Grace knew that tone of his voice. It was the same flatness devoid of hope that he'd used in reference to himself for so long aboard her ship. It sounded the way Isaac had looked since coming from Boston. Something was wrong, and in a deep way.

_He's involved in their scheme. He's more involved than I guessed!_

The surety she had in that sudden thought was gripping but just when she began to voice it, the parlour door opened.

“I am so sorry to have left you so long with this taciturn fellow, my dear,” Cutler said, sauntering into the room.

“Your apology is most unnecessary, my lord,” Grace said, managing to dredge up a smile. “The admiral has quite a gracious tongue.”

She smiled sweetly at James and caught him fighting a smirk.

“Indeed, I'm afraid I subjected Miss Braddock to something of a rollicking adventure,” he said. “She seemed almost enthralled or has otherwise shown me far more patience than I deserve.”

“Is that so?” Isaac said with a laugh, but Grace saw the look he gave her. “I am glad you were able to pass the time so well.”

“And now regrettably, I am afraid we must be going,” Beckett said.

“Oh, must you so soon?” Grace said, standing. “I do so enjoy your company.”

“And I yours, my dear. You have my deepest apologies,” Beckett said, clasping her hand and kissing it. “But business is ever constant and so must I be vigilant. The admiral and I have important work to do, do we not?”

James had risen when she had, and his eyes remained fixed on her. She tried her best not to stare back.

“Indeed, my lord,” he said and then he turned to her. “Thank you for your company, Miss Braddock. I hope we may meet again some day in more favorable times.”

“As do I, Admiral. You will be most welcome,” she said. This time when he kissed her hand it was light and quick, very proper. But his eyes were more than warm.

“That man is completely taken with you,” Isaac said once James and Beckett had been shown to the door. “What did you get out of him?”

Grace looked out at the garden and tapped her fingers against her lips to hide her grin. “Not nearly enough,” she said.

 

* * *

 

The room was nothing impressive. It was more the questionable to be truthful, but Grace had expected little better from the rooms at the _Black Dogg_.

She had crept out of the house Beckett had provided them with no trouble at all. There were few servants and Isaac was not about to find her running about the streets in the dead of night strange. She'd left a bit earlier than she'd needed to, but she had lain in her bed staring up at the ceiling and the walls and the un-moving floor had been so confining. She'd walked along the shore for a time before coming here, hoping the rushing of the waves would sap some of the rushing in her blood and make it bearable, but no. No, of course it hadn't.

Grace paced the room, running her hands repeatedly through her hair. Her skin felt tight and entirely too hot. Her bones prickled and the _aching_. It had never really gone since the afternoon. She should have known better than to hope it would. There was a knock at the door and her heart leapt to a whole new pace. James was inside almost before the door was open. Grace heard the chink of glass when he set his pack down but she had no time to protest. He kissed her, deep, drinking her in like a man adrift given water. She felt the rough scratch of stubble against the corner of her mouth and realized she had missed even that.

Her back hit the door hard and she reached for his waistcoat buttons, but James gripped her wrists, pinning her arms to her sides.

“No. Not yet,” he said and his voice was all heat and smoke. “Tonight I give the orders, captain.”

She had thought her desire couldn't swell any higher but he pulled a coiled length of rope from his coat pocket and she lost all control of her breathing. All she could see were his green eyes, red-rimmed and hungry through the tousle of his dark and disheveled hair. And his devil's grin when she nodded her agreement.

_Touch me, God damn you! Touch me before I die of it!_

“Hands behind your back, smuggler,” he said, words rough with a need that pulled at her own. She turned and a trice he had her bound. Gripping her arm he turned her to face him, her back to the door once again.

“Now, then,” he said. “Let us see what you're hiding.”

His fingers swept down her neck, across her collar bone, his thumb lingering for a moment in the hollow of her throat. He pressed against it only slightly and her breath hitched despite herself. His hand moved to cup her breast and she could feel the heat of his palm through her bodice.

“This bears further examination,” he said and with a finesse she hadn't known he possessed he had her bodice unhooked and open.

“You're experienced with undressing a woman it seems,” Grace said, unable to stop herself.

James' eyes flashed and he jerked on the rope that bound her hands, pressing her even harder against the door. She thought he meant to kiss her again, but he held himself back.

“Such impertinence,” he growled against her ear. His free hand tugged the neckline of her shift below her breasts. “Now, you will be _silent_.”

He emphasized the final word with a firm squeeze. Then he bent his head and began to kiss and nip and suckle at one while his clever, calloused fingers massaged the other. Grace stifled a moan, but only just. A prickling tension was building between her shoulder blades and being bound only increased it. She writhed against the rope, her mouth dry. She needed him. She needed, she needed—

A jolt of hot pleasure rippled through her and pooled in her belly as James' teeth bit into the flesh where her shoulder met her neck. Oh, he knew her well! He used to be so timid, so afraid of hurting her. He was well free of that notion, now. He lifted the hem of her skirts, sliding a hand up her thigh and around to her rear with an appreciative murmur.

“It would seem I've caught myself a degenerate as well as a smuggler,” he said.

Grace snuck her leg around the back of his own and pulled quickly, buckling his knee so that fell against her. She rolled her hips and groaned, feeling the long, hard length of him pressed against her stomach.

“Let my hands free and I'll prove just how _degenerate_ I can be,” she said.

James went very still and he pushed himself away from her with a chuckle that played a sonata down her spine.

“There will be plenty of time to bargain once you are thoroughly searched,” he said, sounding a little breathless himself now. And then his fingers slipped between her folds.

Grace let her head fall back against the door as the sensations shuddered through her, hot and sharp like lighting in the deep of summer. His fingers were clever—so very clever—and he knew her rhythms. She was acutely aware of James' breath on her neck and of her own growing more ragged as the molten knot in her belly grew tighter and tighter and _tighter_ until at last it gave way and whimpering cry tore from her lips. James gave her no time to recover. He spun her around and she could hear him swearing under his breath as he fumbled to untie her. This time when she reached to undress him he did not stop her.

He was thinner than she remembered and several new, pale scars criss-crossed his chest but he was beautiful and she hungered for him. Now that she could touch him she made good use of it, but his hands were roaming too and she could hardly see straight for needing him. She could feel him shaking; how was he holding back at this point? She was burning so hot she thought she might turn to ashes.

“Shall I have my way with you now, smuggler?” he said.

“Yes. Please, yes!” she said, barely able to summon the right language. James twined his fingers in her hair and yanked hard, forcing her to look up at him.

“Yes, _what_?” he said and his voice was so low it vibrated in her bones, more snarl than words. Her eyes widened. Part of her couldn't believe he wanted to hear it, but she swallowed around the pressure of his hand around her throat.

“Yes, sir,” she said.

An expression like she'd never seen came over him and he pulled her not to the bed but to the table in the corner. He all but threw her over it, hands gripping her wrists, and they cried out together as he entered her.

He was unrelenting, bestial and she loved it. The deeper he thrust the more she craved. She would have urged him on, begged him for more if she could but words were beyond her. When the release finally came it was deep and desperate and she found herself gasping on the thin edge between tears and hysterical laughter. James came to his pleasure with one final, straining push and he collapsed over her onto his elbows, his breath bellowing like a winded horse. They stayed that way for a moment, with the world spinning dizzy around them, shivering as the tide receded.

At last he pulled away from her with a groan and she heard him pick up his pack and fall onto the bed. Grace pulled herself up to sit on the table. She wasn't so sure she could walk just yet. She contented herself with the sight of James sprawled naked on the bed with one arm behind his head and that damnable lazy grin on his face.

“Sated now, are you?” she said.

“Don't press me, woman,” James said with a smirk, pulling the cork from a bottle with his teeth. “I'd have you again right now if I were able.”

Grace laughed. “You're what, thirty-two? Hardly old enough for such worries.”

“My thanks for that,” James said. “But a man still needs a breather.”

Grace eased herself off the table and stretched before joining him on the bed.

“I could use a swallow, if you don't mind,” she said and James handed the bottle over without hesitation. She drank, grimacing as she always did, and hefted the bottle in her hand, glancing sidelong at James. He was definitely thinner than he had been, and not in the lean and fit way of a sailor. It was the pallid and hollow thinness of a man apt to drink himself to a far too early grave.

“You can still escape this, James,” she said. “I've seen more drunks than I care to count and you're not so far gone as that.”

James took the bottle back from her with a acidic smirk. “If you had seen me only a few months ago you might not have so rosy an outlook.”

“I've seen you in some damn poor states,” Grace said. “And you pulled yourself out of them. I know you could manage to give it up. You were doing well when you were with me.”

James shook his head and drank. “I was,” he said. “That was the problem.”

Grace choked down the hurt she felt at his words. Was he really so insufferably thick-headed that he didn't know just how fast and far he'd made her fall with his eyes and his voice and his wit and his whole damned person? She forced the bitter thoughts aside. She knew what he meant by it. It wasn't her he'd had to leave, it was all she represented to him. She presented a chance for peace that his bloody honor would never let him take.

“What happened on Tortuga?” she asked. “I know Beckett's man found you there, but what then?”

It was a moment before James spoke, but when he did it was in the same deadened tones he had used to tell her about the hurricane. He'd spent weeks wandering the streets, drunk more often than not, waiting for Jack Sparrow to appear. He spoke of the bar fight and his runaway fiancee coming to find him and he paused.

“I thought she was you at first,” he said, a little sheepish. “The hands, I could tell they were a woman's but...anyhow. I had hoped.”

_I should have waited longer. Sent out more men._

Grace was struck but that, and struck harder than she wished but her practical side soon reasserted itself. Her boys had spent their pay and they wouldn't bide past three spare days in port with no coin. There was no way she could have stayed.

James continued and his tale grew more fantastical; Jack's infernal compass, the heart of Davy Jones, and the mad fight to attain it. Hellish denizens of the _Dutchman_ she could believe well enough but there was one point she simply could not.

“A wheel, James?”

“On top of a rolling water wheel,” he said. “My hand to God, Grace, I could not possibly exaggerate.”

“You whipped them both half to Christendom, didn't you?” Grace said.

“Naturally,” James said. “I trained Turner myself and Sparrow flails about like a dazed gull.”

Grace laughed and James managed a dull half-smile.

“I knew where Sparrow had hidden the heart and so I took it,” he went on. “Tucked it inside my own shirt. Eerie experience. I took the letters of marque as well and when the time came, I ran into the jungle with the empty chest, gave it up to Jones' men, and made my own escape. I suppose in the end I had my victory.”

Grace sighed as he finished his tale. Betrayal. So that was what troubled him now.

“They'd have done the same to you, James,” she said. “Or worse, to be honest. At the least you drew the danger away from them. I doubt even your former fiancee would have done as much.”

“Perhaps, perhaps not,” James said. “I'm a poor judge of her motives. But I watched from the beach. The _Black Pearl_ went down in the grip of the Kraken and who could survive such a thing?”

“So it's true,” Grace said softly, gooseflesh prickling her arms despite the muggy air. “I'd heard the rumors.”

“They're true,” James said. “Sparrow's got his comeuppance and all I had to do was become a pirate to achieve it!”

He took a long pull and scowled at the half-empty bottle. “Tell me something, Grace. Every time I malign Jack Sparrow you laugh. Did you know him?”

Grace took a short, quick breath. It was all the time she needed to asses how much truth was the right amount.

“We've crossed paths,” she said. “In my pirate days. We were not friends, shall we say.”

James narrowed his eyes. “Is that the whole truth?” he asked.

“James—”

“Damn it all, Grace!”

“James, it isn't safe!” Grace broke in, sitting up. “How else can I make you understand? I have people to protect, I have myself to protect! It is not safe to be honest with you, especially now.”

She looked back at him, willing him to understand. She would tell him if she could, in a heartbeat. She would tell it all to him and that made him a danger.

_I never should have come._

“One true thing, that's all I ask,” James said. He set the bottle aside and moved in front of her, taking her hand. “Give me one wholly true part of yourself and I promise I'll leave it be and make love to you all the rest of the night.”

Grace felt the sting of tears in her eyes and she pressed James' hand to her lips. The whole tale was there on the tip of her tongue, longing to spill over and end the whole charade. One piece. One piece only. But maybe she could spare a little more, if he didn't know.

“Very well,” she said and took a deep breath, letting her tongue relax. “Non ten idea do que estou dicindo. Podo dicirlle tanto así. Podo dicirlle sobre o meu fillo. Ten nove anos. Yo coñecín. Vostede recorda?”

James' expression was almost comical. He blinked at her, uncomprehending, and then a slow smile spread across his face.

“You're not English, are you?” he said.

“Not entirely,” Grace said and she could feel the accent in her mouth. For once she didn't bother hiding it. “My father was an Englishman in the merchant marine, but I was born to a woman in A Coruña, in Galicia.”

“A Spaniard!” James said, laughing.

“Half _galega_ , I'll thank you to remember,” Grace said with a grin. “Call me a Spaniard in a Galician tavern and you're likely to get a broken nose for it.”

“Consider it a permanent fixture of my memory,” James said. “Your English is impeccable. I would never have guessed. Though there were times when your words had an odd music to them.”

“Switching between the tongues is easy enough,” Grace said. “I was still a child when my mother died and I was sent to live with my father. I was well taught, sometimes harshly. But erasing my accent is difficult at times.”

James was smiling that warm and honest smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes, the smile he'd given her on their last morning together. He reached for the necklace that hung between her bare breasts, running his thumb over the two charms; one a burnished cross of St. James, the other a silver clam shell.

“And you're a bloody Catholic,” he said.

“I try to be,” Grace said. “I'm not so sure I succeed anymore. You've sailed these waters as long as I have. Can you in all honesty call yourself a proper English Protestant after all you've seen?”

“I don't know what to call myself,” James said and she felt the weather of his mood turn. Seeing his frown and his drawn brow, a sense of surety came over her. For all he thought tying himself to Beckett was his path to redemption, for all he wanted it to be, it was a path with only one end.

“James, I know what Beckett is planning,” Grace said and he nodded.

“I suspected as much,” he said.

“It's madness. The sea cannot be held. Any sailor knows that.”

“I know,” James said. “But Beckett has bought me. What choice do I have?”

The dejected acceptance in his voice set off a spark of anger in her and she grasped his face, forcing him to meet her gaze.

“You listen to me, James Norrington,” she said. “Beckett has bought your services. He has not bought you. It is not your heart he keeps locked in his desk.”

James pulled her hands away and held them in his lap. “It may as well be,” he said. “What else can I do?”

“Run,” Grace said, her heart pounding. “Isaac takes me back to the _Glory_ the day after tomorrow. He will hide you if I ask it. Come with me, James. Please.”

She was gripping his hands now and despite all her efforts a tear or two escaped her eyes. James wiped them away with his thumb.

“Oh, Grace,” he said and his voice wavered. “I can't. I _can't_. It's too easy and I want it too much.”

She knew he meant it. She could see the struggle in his whole body, the pull of what she offered him against the firm anchor of his misguided vow of penance.

“Damn your stubborn English hide,” she said with a choking laugh. “If you won't come with me, then at least come to me tomorrow night.”

She kept the rest of the thought silent, but she knew he understood it. A steely look came into his eyes and he pulled her to him, kissing her with a new and tender intensity. It was not her own tears she tasted.

_Come to me tomorrow night and let me say goodbye._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translation: "You don't understand a word I'm saying. I can tell you anything like this. I can tell you about my son. He's nine years old. You met him. Do you remember?"
> 
> **If anyone reading is familiar with the Galician dialect and notices any errors please let me know so I can correct them! I'm working with limited translation resources**


End file.
